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Updated: July 15, 2025
I meant, of course, folk who are dukes. We're all dukes or bagmen." The young man chuckled; but in a minute he pulled a long face, and made big, ominous eyes. "I feel I ought to warn you," he said in a portentous voice, "that some of us are mere marquises of the house of Carabas." Lady Blanchemain, her whole expansive person, simmered with enjoyment.
"Fortune has spared her that necessity," said John. "I haven't asked her, and I never shall. I haven't any money." "Pooh! Is that all?" scoffed her ladyship, relieved. "You have prospects." "Remote ones the remoter the better. I won't count on dead men's shoes," said John. "What is it your little fortune-teller at the Castle calls you?" asked Lady Blanchemain, shrewdly, her dark old eyebrows up.
Her voice is like ivory and white velvet; and to hear her speak English is a revelation of the hidden beauties of that language." "Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, eyeing him. "So you've advanced to the point of talking with her?" "Well," answered John, weighing his words, "I don't know whether I can quite say that.
"The heir-presumptive I suppose I am," he said. Lady Blanchemain leaned back and gently tittered. "See how I know my Peerage!" she exclaimed. Then, looking grave, "You're heir to an uncommonly good old title," she informed him. "I hope it may be many a long day before I'm anything else," said he. "Your uncle is an old man," she suggestively threw out. "Oh, not so very old," he submitted.
But with the death of the late lord, a dozen years or so ago, the younger line became extinct, and the title reverted." "I see," said my lady. She knitted her eyebrows, computing. After an instant, "General Blanchemain," she resumed, "as the present lord was called for the best part of his life, is a bachelor. You will be one of his nephews?" She raised her eyes inquiringly.
Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and watching, always round-eyed, till it was out of sight. "What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to you." "Who is she?" asked the lady. "She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity.
She'll end, as I've told her to her face, by writing books, serious novels, probably, which she'll illuminate with beautiful irrelevant quotations from Browning and Cardinal Newman." "Bother," said Lady Blanchemain. "You're perverse." "Besides," said John, "she's engaged." "Engaged ?" faltered Lady Blanchemain.
His visitor caught her breath. She sat up straight, and gazed hard at him. "Blanchemain?" she gasped. There were, to be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely poignant situation.
Not that his coming would matter particularly if it weren't for complications, but there are several, the most formidable of which is a Young Man. The Young Man is a French young man, and his name is Honoré du Guesclin. She met him at Madame de Blanchemain's you remember the Madame de Blanchemain who was Ellaline's dead mother's most intimate friend, and who lives at St. Cloud?
But by this time to-morrow who can tell?" "Have you found out who she is?" asked Lady Blanchemain. "No not yet," said he. But by this time to-morrow!" His gesture spoke volumes of prospective information. "She looked like a gentlewoman," reflected his friend. "For all the world," said he. "Yet, if she's an Austrian " She paused and pondered. "Why? What's the difficulty?" said he.
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